Thursday, April 20, 2006

In a recent post, I examined a few of the best helmets in college football. Today, I turn a critical eye to the protective headgear worn by collegiate grid iron warriors that can most generously be described as "lacking." These are not the worst helmets (notice no further mention of Illinois or Central Michigan), but rather these are the unfortunate schools that have badly missed opportunites to make their helmets great. Thankfully, the MZone is here to show you how good these helmets could be with just a little imagination.

Let's start with:

Indiana - Face it Hoosiers, when someone mentions IU and sports three things come to mind: the storied basketball program, the gritty tenacity of the Cutters in "Breaking Away," and the perennial 3-8 football team. So why not bring a little distinction to the football team and perhaps mooch some positive vibes from the successful hoopsters by making the helmets resemble the basketball team's warmup pants? It will allow IU to stand out from the crowd and infuse some crazy into a football program that has been devoid of it ever since Sam Wyche left Bloomington.

And then there's:North Carolina - Despite a unique and striking color scheme, NC has average-at-best helmets. They could go with something that has their inexplicable ram mascot, but I think they would do better to simply have the Carolina blue helmet with that tar-smudged foot depicted on each side. A foot. It's like Clemson, but human. Plus the story of the tar heel is generations-old and has about 100 different versions.

Finally:Auburn - The Auburn helmets are pretty good right now, but wouldn't these be even better? In addition to integrating the team mascot (Tigers) with the favorite chant of their passionate fans ("Weagle, Weagle. War Damn Eagle!") the freakish animal hybrid featured on this new helmet would definitely confuse and frighten opponents.

9 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Damn that Indiana helmet is painful to look at. That might have additional advantages on the football field, kind of like the way the zebra’s stripes confuse predators when the heard starts running. Or, they could trigger epileptic seizures. Either one could result in a—dare I say it?—a 4-7 season.

I think the school with the biggest missed opportunity for cool helmets, uniforms, and mascot usage is the East Carolina University Pirates. As members of Conference USA, they make most people ask “EC who?” but just a few years ago they had the best college football team in North Carolina. OK, that’s not saying much in that basketball loving state.

Their finest hour probably came in 1999 after Hurricane Floyd devastated the coastal region of the state. With East Carolina’s Greenville campus still under water and lacking electricity and the team having spent the last week in a South Carolina hotel, they were scheduled to host none other than the Miami Hurricanes. North Carolina State graciously offered Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh for the game and—just like it was a Walt Disney movie—the Pirates rallied from a 23-3 deficit to upset the #9 ranked Hurricanes, 27-23.

Anyway, East Carolina totally misses the proverbial pirate sloop in taking full advantage of its mascot. The coast of North Carolina really was once a haven for pirates so there’s some genuine geographical significance with the mascot. Instead, East Carolina has opted for “ECU” on the side of their helmets in a rather bland font and a barely noticeable cutlass underneath.

East Carolina should wholeheartedly embrace its inner pirate. Why not used the “Piracy” or “Buccaneer” fonts for the letters or even the jersey numbers? Or, and this is where the possibilities really get good, slap a jolly roger on the side of the helmet, you can’t go wrong with that. The potential combinations of skulls, crossed bones, swords, pistols, menacing pirate ships is just too enticing to pass up. They might not be the most traditional, but they’d be fun.

There’s also the opportunity to have the team adopt a pirate mentality to the game, plundering and pillaging their down the field. They will have to forgo the rape part, rape is very bad, but a freewheeling, wide open, even reckless spirit would just kick ass. They do at least fire an old naval cannon when their team scores, but they could do so much more.

And let’s not forget dressing the cheerleaders as naughty pirate wenches.

Baggy, it seems as if you're asking ECU to embrace their inner Raider. Everything you suggest is what the Oakland Raiders do - right down to the slutty cheerleaders, the demented fans, and the owner who still wears jumpsuits and white leather loafers.

Please don't let the Bama fans know that the Weagle is not real. We fool them into holding a crimson bag while waiting in the woods for the Weagle critter to run by. In areas of the country where the IQ is over that of the average student in Tuscaloosa (basically everywhere) they call this mythical creature SNIPE

The UNC helmet makes it look like the player got kicked in the head by a hillbilly. By the way, the ram mascot is not inexplicable, but I'll spare you the details. The Auburn helmet is hilarious. Good job!!

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